The film is a feature film directed by American female director Eliza Hittman. It was screened at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival this year and won the Jury Prize in the main competition unit, becoming a popular film with wide acclaim.
The plot of the movie is very simple: in a village in Pennsylvania, USA, two high school girls live an ordinary life and go to the supermarket to work part-time in their spare time. Among them, Autumn suddenly found out that she was unexpectedly pregnant. After checking by the local gynecological hospital, it was determined that she needed to go to New York for an abortion. Then, she and her cousin Skylar secretly left home and set off for New York for an interstate abortion trip.
silent majority girl
The girls in the video works are always warm and beautiful, wanton arrogance, and unrestrained in their youth. Although this unrestrainedness is often interpreted as romance, but because of the short time, it always exudes a charming fragrance, which makes people unable to remember. retrospectively.
And the two girls in the female director's video are more like most of us, a pair of ordinary working parents, a slightly messy and hurried home, part-time jobs with little pay and no hard work, boring and ridiculous campus reporting activities... …the bright scallion stage is the background of life for the ash. Such a simple lens, across countries and eras, does always have a sense of old familiarity.
But the sudden physical discomfort broke the boring routine, and Autumn had to face an unacceptable reality: she was pregnant unexpectedly! Because of the alienation of the family, she was unable to speak and rely on her, so she could only secretly find various ways to throw away the unacceptable fetus. She drank mouthwash, beat her stomach hard, and ate vitamin C tablets, but she couldn't stop the fetus from growing. , in the end can only hope that abortion will eradicate this trouble.
She cowardly chose to face the fact of pregnancy alone, but she also made a strong decision to have an abortion alone. The strength and weakness of women are always colliding and tolerant, coexisting in a silent face, which is too difficult to see and guess. Fortunately, the same female director gave a lot of close-up shots for the audience to capture the occasional flashes on her indifferent face. Passed pain and struggle, or happy and relaxed, or firm and persistent...
powerful majority men
When the girls are rushing about in life and in different places, the men who are skipped in the movie are always mocking and judging from the top. At the beginning of Autumn's performance, classmates yelled "slut", when the whole family watched TV together, the stepfather pointed at "slut", the verbal molestation of rough customers in part-time supermarkets, the peeping and salty pig hands on the side of the supervisor, and the subway The exposed man, these targeted words and deeds come together to look particularly insulting, as if Autumn deliberately took the wrong chocolate with all its bitterness.
The film reflects the aggressiveness of men towards girls through many shots of hands. The classmates put their hands to their mouths and shouted deliberately, the supermarket supervisor pulled his hands and kissed, the subway exposed the slow motion of the man extending his hand to his lower body, and the arm touching when the bus boy approached. The hand is an extension of the limb. The movement of the hand approaches and breaks the safe distance of the girl, and the intention of the violation is obvious.
In fact, women often encounter such explicit or implicit humiliation encounters in reality: they are ridiculed as sluts when they dress neatly, they are ridiculed by pornographic jokes at dinner parties with men, and they encounter salty pigs who are secretly photographed and cannot escape on the bus. The director brought together these occasional encounters in ordinary life, and the audience was so sick and choked with pain that they realized that this society is full of ugly faces of male dominance.
Abortion is facing the pain of life
Although the man who made Autumn pregnant does not appear, the song she plays and sings at the beginning of the movie has already described the process of this relationship:
"I tried to escape, but failed because I loved him
Can't refuse his request because I have the ability to make me fall in love with him
When I didn't want to leave, he forced me to stay, he forced me to say what I didn't want to say"
The two girls in the movie both experienced the coercion of the other side of the relationship in different ways. Autumn calmly prepares for the abortion all the way, showing the tip of the iceberg of vulnerability and despair when the nurse asks "Has your sexual partner physically abused you?"
And Skylar's story is relatively complete: Lu Yu approached a teenager, and because he was too shy, he had to seduce him to get a ticket home. Whether it is wrong love or no love, they are all in a weak compromise and give way, and finally leave an uneasy depression.
The most beautiful is the warmth of mutual dependence
Compared with the happy ending of "Juno" and the dejection of "Death of the Virgin", the support of the two young girls in this film brings a little warmth to the cold topic of abortion.
They are not only blood cousins, but also best friends who share secrets with each other, friends who encourage and love each other, and women who understand and support each other. Two girls, two genders, secretly hooked up their hands and secretly formed a happy little world, and only then could they give birth to each other to bravely fight against this not-so-good world.
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